Everyone collects our data… Apple, Google, third party apps… everyone. So what is the really concern with China doing it specifically? Everything I have tried to read about this just talks about how China will use it for ads, but that’s what tons of other tech companies are already doing… so why is China owning our data different?
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It’s bad for anyone to collect as much data as all of these technology companies have been doing, but it’s worse when it’s outside of the jurisdiction of your own government. For people living in the US, the US government is able to regulate technology companies to prevent dangerous misuse of all that data. Whether or not the US government is regulating the collection and use of that data enough is a whole other topic. An American company is going to be motivated primarily by profit and protecting its own interests. It may share the data with political organizations, but those organizations don’t want to destabilize or destroy the US, they just want to win elections.
If the company collecting the data is based on a foreign country and cannot be regulated by the US government, there’s no way to stop the company from using the data in ways you would not approve. The fact that, in this case, the foreign country is China makes it more likely the data will be used in harmful ways. ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, is known to have close ties to the Chinese government. The Chinese government can use the data to try and manipulate US elections or sway public opinion. They have a lot to gain from destabilizing or manipulating America’s political systems or economy.
If they know somewhere is strategic important and they could see someone goes there a lot, they could:
1. Push misinformation or narrative to influence the person to do or feel a certain way about the Chinese gov
2. Maybe phishing emails if they have the email Infor and get access to the network
There’s a conspiracy that the governments want it gone due to one of its most popular hashtags with 3.5 billion views and counting. Yup #flatearth and I was correct when I said Billion!!
While the answer that a lot of people give here are absolutely correct, it’s not a TikTok specific situation at all.
The US has very poor regulation on consumer protection in general and especially so when it comes to internet protections. For internet that’s absolutely dominated by US companies, the real dangers are usually ignored by the dinosaurs that make up the US political system. There is simply no urgency to do anything if “you” seem to control everything.
That means that the US specifically (with some state exceptions) have very lax laws when it comes to this sort of thing. It only gets attention now because TikTok happens to be a Chinese company that suddenly gets the very same capacity that US companies already have.
Remember the whole NSA scandal? It was never a problem that the NSA spies on the entire world. It’s only considered a problem once it came out they actually targeted US citizens. This whole TikTok situation is not fundamentally different.
It’s ‘fine’ that US companies are able to manipulate (and have proven to manipulate) their citizens and the citizens of the world because of the smokescreen of control for the US government. Now that a foreign power gets the same power, they suddenly realise what an enormous problem this potentially is.
And because there pretty much is no proper regulation about this sort of thing (like GDPR in the EU), there is no actual leverage to ban apps like TikTok from the App or Playstore. They would easily win lawsuits against the US government if they were forced to remove TikTok from their services. (which is why Apple/Google won’t remove them).
It’s incredibly telling that this crusade is aimed specifically against TikTok instead of lawmakers doing their job and regulating the entire market, not just TikTok. If these laws existed, TikTok could easily be forced to comply or barred from the market.
(And there can easily be provisions in the law to continue allowing this hoarding of data for AI purposes if you properly implemented them. The value of data collection is clear)
One difference between the US and the EU in this regard is that TikTok can be fairly confident a US investigation doesn’t legally find any problems with their approach. A similar investigation done by the EU however can have serious repercussions because unlike the US, the EU actually has proper laws in place for this stuff. (whether enforcement is efficient is an entirely different manner)
So in short, it really has nothing to do with TikTok itself. It’s just that the consequence and power of these companies (including Google/Facebook/Apple/MS) suddenly becomes apparent now that a company controlled by a rival gets the same power. And because the reflex of US lawmakers is not to make things better overall but only act against outside influence, a crusade on TikTok is suddenly on the agenda.
(A fun thought experience perhaps. Imagine a world in which Apple, MS, Google and Amazon were European companies dominating the US market. Do you really believe the approach by US lawmakers would be exactly the same as they are now? Perhaps the US would have better enforced anti-trust laws and GDPR in that case and the EU would be much more lax. You have to look no further than the actions taken by the US government against a company like ASML to find your answer)
The concern seems to be more steeped in a general fear of China as an adversary. There’s a belief that China is pulling the strings on TikTok in order to manipulate America that sounds more theoretical than factual, and largely only functions if you directly deny the last few years of social engineering on social media.
Twitter and Facebook are both American companies that, due to their hesitation to shut down anything that might give them the appearance of a political bias, let quite a bit of misinformation run rampant. There’s evidence that some early social engineering was used way back when the Ferguson protests happened as well. Given the extreme political divide between the two parties in America, it’s much easier to manipulate that divide than it is to do anything else.
Additionally, every company that data harvests sells that data. I find it highly unlikely that these datasets were never directly or indirectly sold to China. I also find it highly unlikely that China would be able to influence a “patriot” account on TikTok to cause damage to get a criminal record buried when that same “patriot” account can be influenced by a few notable influencers to purchase BudLight for the sake of shooting at it, or to march the capitol on January 6th.
It seems more likely that politicians are suspicious of it because it’s Chinese and thus may not be as easily influenced by American pressure, because otherwise the threat of TikTok seems to be, at best, theoretical compared to the very real threat of misinformation. Vaccine hesitancy, government distrust, and an increase in violence have all come from Twitter and Facebook already.
China has nothing like a US bill of rights. They can collect all that data, and if they don’t like what you are saying or what your family is saying, they can use that against you one way or another. They have a network of secret “police” stations in other countries to enforce Chinese law on people they disagree with.
Which is part of the overall problem with China telecom companies building the network infrastructure in many countries.
Do we want China to have tons of data on U.S. citizens? Facial and financial and contacts etc. They will use it for their benefit only. There’s a good reason this app is blocked in China.
The Chinese government has stolen personal information in an attempt to track and out American agents and assets operating within China (and probably around the world). The Chinese government hacked Marriot, health insurers, and the American employment agency to see who is working for the U.S. government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-china-trade.html
At the bare minimum you’re giving money, power and influence to a genocidal dictator who is currently destroying democracies while building concentration camps. All so we can use an app that has nothing proprietary about it (and is harmful to us especially kids). Tomorrow an American company could be made called TOKTIK and copy just about everything and we wouldn’t have to worry about a ruthless dictator having and selling our data. If you need more justification than that China is constantly stealing patents and technology, we should do the same with TikTok
Watch the big hack on Netflix. Is a good review on Cambridge analytics.
One of the things they did was to shift an election by social engineering I believe it was Indian and black families.
Mass social engineering is only possible by understanding the masses and by encouraging specific views to be pushed to individuals.
Say from statistics they see that your the type of individual that could be undecided in an election since you don’t follow any specific leaning groups. They can then push more positive or negative content to you based on the candidate they think is more beneficial to them.
Even if they detect you lean one way or another, they can push more extreme content to you. They know that they can’t sway you, but by turning you into an extremist, with only partially true information they might isolate you from making a reasonable argument to sway other more undecided.
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